Apple is hoping the desire to have a personal assistant and availability on Sprint will push sales of the new iPhone 4S.

The Siri assistant app promises to take natural language voice commands to execute orders and give verbal feedback to the user.

Here are a few examples used in the demo:
-- "Do I need a raincoat today" and Siri responded "It sure looks like rain today" and showed the forecast on the screen.
-- "What time is it in Paris?" and Siri responded "The time in Paris, France is 8:16 p.m." and brought up a clock.
-- "Wake me up tomorrow at 6 a.m." and Siri responded "Okay, I set it for 6 a.m."
-- "Find me a great Greek restaurant in Palo Alto" and Siri responded "I found 14 Greek restaurants (via Yelp), 5 of them are in Palo Alto. I've sorted them by rating" and displayed the restaurant list.
-- Demos also included sending and receiving messages and setting up calendar appointments, getting directions, searching the Internet and dictation. It will work with English, French and German, and other languages will be added.

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• The other iPhone 4S features are minor upgrades over last year's iPhone 4.
-- It is a "world phone," which has both CDMA radios for Sprint and Verizon and GSM radios for AT&T and a majority of the carriers overseas.
-- It comes with the same A5 chip that is in the iPad 2, and Apple says it is twice as fast as the iPhone 4.
-- The camera has been improved to 8 megapixels and promises to take only 1 second before the camera is ready to shoot and a half second between shots. The video recording is in 1080p and has image stabilization.
-- The HSPA+ wireless service with AT&T and other overseas GSM carriers has been increased to a "theoretical maximum of 14.4 Mbps downloads (good luck getting that).
-- But the hardware design remains nearly the same as last year's model and Apple promises great battery life.

The iPhone 4S preorders begin Oct. 7 and will be released Oct. 14. The 16 GB model is $199, the 32 GB model is $299 and new 64 GB model is $399. The iPhone 4 with 8 GB will sell for $99. The two-year-old iPhone 3GS will be free with a contract. In the U.S., the iPhone will be sold on Verizon, AT&T and Sprint.

Other announcements
• The iPod Touch big announcement: it now comes in white. The 8GB model is now $199, the 32 GB model is $299 and a 64GB model is $399.

• The iPod Nano got a minor update, with the touchscreen interface tweaked slightly and a pedometer to measure your steps added. Apple also added 16 new watch faces. The Nano costs $129 for 8GB model and $149 for the 16 GB model. They are available today.

• iOS 5, the latest version of the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad operating system, will be released for free Oct. 12. It's top new features include new notifications of such things as emails, calendar items, text messages; and iMessages, a free message system between iOS devices. Best of all, after this update, future iOS system software can be upgraded without hooking it up to a computer.

• Apple's free iCloud service, which uses online storage to share photos and music and other data between various devices, also is set to launch Oct. 12. Service comes with some free storage, and additional storage is available for a fee.

• Along with iCloud launching Oct. 12, the $25 a year iTunes Match service will scan a users' library and provide replacement versions for poorer quality music. The music then can be downloaded to users devices directly from Apple's online storage.

• Apple introduced two other new apps. Family and Friends app lets users pick times to share their location data with select people. With the Cards app, users take a photo, pick a design, and Apple will mail a real-life card to someone for $3. Users will get a notification on the day the Postal Service will deliver it.